The Loudwater Mystery Part 4

"Threatened men live long," said Mr. Manley carelessly.

CHAPTER III

There is in the collection of the Earl of Ellesmere a picture of the head of a girl which the connoisseurs of the nineteenth century ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci. The connoisseurs of the twentieth century ascribe it to Luini. But for the colour of the hair it might have been a portrait of Lady Loudwater, a faded portrait. It might also very well be a portrait of one of her actual ancestresses, for her grandmother was a lady of an old Tuscan family.

Be that as it may, Lady Loudwater had the soft, dark, dreamy eyes, set rather wide apart, the straight, delicate nose, the alluring lips, promising all the kisses, the broad, well-moulded forehead, and the faint, exactly curving eyebrows of the girl in the picture. Above all, when Lord Loudwater was not present, the mysterious, enchanting, lingering smile, which is perhaps the chief charm of Luini's women, rested nearly always on her face. But while the hair of the girl in the picture is a deep, dull red, the hair of Olivia was dark brown with glimmers of gold in it. Also, her colouring was warmer than that of the girl in the picture, and her alluring charm stronger.

At a quarter to three that afternoon she came out on to the East lawn in a silk frock and hat of a green rather sombre for the summer day. She had been bidden by a fashionable fortune-teller never to wear green, for it was her unlucky colour. But that tint had so given her colouring its full values and her dark, liquid eyes so deep a depth, that she had paid no heed to the warning. There was a bright light of expectation in her eyes, and the alluring smile lingered on her face.

She walked quickly across the lawn with the easy, graceful gait proper to the accomplished golfer she was, into the shrubbery on the other side of it. A few feet along the path through it she looked sharply back over her shoulder. She saw no one at those windows of the East wing which looked on to the lawn and shrubbery, but a movement on the lawn itself caught her eye. The cat Melchisidec was following her. She did not slacken her pace, but for a moment the smile faded from her face at the remembrance of her husband's outburst at breakfast. Then the smile returned, subtile and expectant.

She did not wait for Melchisidec. She knew his way of pretending to follow her like a dog; she knew that if she displayed any interest in him, even showed that she was aware of his presence, he would probably come no further. She went on at the same brisk pace till she came to the gate in the East wood. She went through it, shut it gently, paused, and again looked back. All of the path through the shrubbery that she could see was empty. She turned and walked briskly along the narrow path through the wood, and came into the long, turf-paved aisle which ran at right angles to it.

The middle of the aisle was deeply rutted by the wheels of the carts which had carried away the timber from the spring thinning of the wood.

She turned to the left and sauntered slowly up the smooth turf along the side of the aisle, a brighter light of expectation in her eyes, her smile even more mysterious and alluring.

She had not gone fifty yards up the aisle when Colonel Grey came limping out of the entrance of a path on the other side of it, and quickened his pace as he crossed it.

She stood still, flushing faintly, gazing at him with her lips parted a little. He looked, as he was, very young to be a Lieutenant-Colonel, and uncommonly fragile for a V. C. At any time he would look delicate, and he was the paler for the fact that at times he still suffered considerable pain from his wound. But there was force in his delicate, distinguished face. His sensitive lips could set very firm; his chin was square; his nose had a rather heavy bridge, and usually his grey eyes were cold and very keen. He gave the impression of being wrought of finely-tempered steel.

His eyes were shining so brightly at the moment that they had lost their keenness with their coldness. He marked joyfully the flush on her face, and did not know that he was flushing himself.

About five feet away he stopped, gazing, or rather staring, at her, and said in a tone of fervent conviction: "Heavens, Olivia! What a beautiful and entrancing creature you are!"

She smiled, flushing more deeply. He stepped forward, took her hand, and held it very tightly.

"Goodness! But I have been impatient for you to come!" he cried.

"I'm not late," she said in her low, sweet, rather drawling voice.

He let go of her hand and said: "I don't know how it is, but I've been as restless as a cat all the morning. I'm never sure that you will be able to come; and the uncertainty worries me."

"But you saw me for three hours yesterday," she said, moving forward.

"Yesterday?" he said, falling into step with her. "Yesterday is a thousand years away. I wasn't sure that you'd come today."

"Why shouldn't I come?" she said.

"Loudwater might have got to know of it and stopped you coming."

"Fortunately he doesn't take enough interest in my doings. Of course, if I didn't turn up at a meal, he'd make a fuss, though why he should make such a point of our having all our meals together I can't conceive. I should certainly enjoy mine much more if I had them in my sitting-room,"

she said in a dispa.s.sionate tone, for all the world as if she were discussing the case of some one else.

"I _am_ so worried about you," he said with a hara.s.sed air. "Ever since that evening I heard him bullying you I've been simply worried to death about it."

"It was nice of you to interfere, but it was a pity," she said gently.

"It didn't do any good as far as his behaviour is concerned, and we saw so much more of one another when you could come to the Castle."

"Then you do want to see more of me?" he said eagerly.

Lady Loudwater lost her smiling air; she became demureness itself, and she said: "Well, you see--thanks to Egbert's vile temper--we have so few friends."

Grey frowned; she was always quick to elude him. Then he growled: "What a name! Egbert!"

"He can't help that. It was given him. Besides, it's a family name," she said in a tone of fine impartiality.

"It would be. Hogbert!" said Grey contemptuously.

Mrs. Truslove and Mr. Manley were not the only people to ignore the essential bullness of Lord Loudwater.

They went on a few steps in silence; then she said: "Besides, I don't mind his outbursts. I'm used to them."

"I don't believe it! You're much too delicate and sensitive!" he cried.

"But I _am_ getting used to them," she protested.

"You never will. Has he been bullying you again?" he said, looking anxiously into her eyes.

"Not more than usual," she said in a wholly indifferent tone.

"Then it is usual! I was afraid it was," he said in a miserable voice.

"What on earth is to be done about it?"

"Why, there's nothing to be done, except just grin and bear it," she said bravely enough, and with the conviction of one who has thought a matter out thoroughly.

"Then it's monstrous! Just monstrous, that the most charming and loveliest creature in the world should be bullied by that infernal brute!" he cried, and put his arm around her.

The Countess was on the very point of slipping out of it when the cat Melchisidec came out of the bushes a dozen yards ahead of them, and with Melchisidec came a very distinct vision of Lord Loudwater's flushed, distorted, and revolting face as he swore at her at breakfast that morning.

She did not slip out of the encircling arm, and Grey bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips.

It was the gentlest, lightest kiss, the kiss he might have given a pretty child, just a natural tribute to beauty and charm.

But the harm was done. The population of Great Britain cannot really be more than one and a half persons to the acre, and the great majority of them live, thousands to the acre, in towns; yet it is indeed difficult to kiss a girl during the daytime in any given acre, however thickly wooded, without being seen by some superfluous sojourner on that acre; and whether, or no, it was that the green frock and hat brought the Countess the bad luck the fortuneteller had foretold, there was a witness to that kiss.

Undoubtedly, too, it was not the right kind of witness. If it had been an indulgent elder not given to gossip, or a chivalrous young man not averse himself from kisses, all might have been well. But William Roper, under-gamekeeper, was a young man without a spark of chivalry in him, and he had been soured in the matter of kisses by the steadfast resolve of the young women of the village to suffer none from him. He was an unattractive young man, not unlike the ferrets he kept at his cottage. He was the last young man in the world, or at any rate in the neighbourhood, to keep silent about what he had seen.

Even so, no great harm might have been done. He might have blabbed about the matter in the village, and the whole village and the servants of the Castle might have talked about it for weeks and months, or even years, without it reaching the ears of Lord Loudwater. But William Roper saw in that kiss his royal road to Fortune. Ambitious in the grain, he was not content with his post of under-gamekeeper; he desired to oust William Hutchings from the post of head-gamekeeper, and though there were two under-gamekeepers senior to him with a greater claim on that post, occupy it himself. Here was the way to it; his lordship could not but be grateful to the man who informed him of such goings-on; he could not but promote him to the post of his desire.

He wholly misjudged his lordship. Ordinary grat.i.tude was not one of his attributes.

Olivia slipped out of Grey's arm, and they walked on up the aisle. But they walked on, changed creatures--trembling, a little bemused.

William Roper, the ill-favoured minister of Nemesis, followed them.